I’ve been looking for discussions on the Auction and the way it functions, couldn’t find any, so here’s my 2 pecs worth.
Price
Putting an item up for auction costs 1 ped. Regardless of its value. That sucks, because there is no point in auctioning an item worth let’s say TT+1, as there’s really no profit to expect. I think a percentage would be better, which should max out at a given level, for example 5 ped when selling a Supremacy harness. As with the cost of the auction, a seller could make the buyer pay for the sale by including (part of) the fee of the auction in the price of the item.
Auctioning low-cost items is the only alternative to having to scream your lungs out, all this to sell a worn-out Pixie harness or FAP5. While those items are very worthwile to beginning players.
Search
Why is there no Search function? For category/price-pricerange, Name, etc. I am interested in Tiger shinguards, but I have to sift thru 21 pages of other SG’s just to find out none are on offer. And you never know, they might be there after all in 20 minutes, or perhaps you just overlooked them!
Sort
Connected to Search is Sort. I want all shinguards sorted first by name, then price, ascending. How come this was not built-in in the first place? There certainly is no excuse for the absence of a Sort function now!
Contact
I would like to be able to contact the seller of an item. He of course must have the option to decline, but I’d like to be able just to ASK! If I see a person often has stuff I like, I’d like to talk to him first, same way you get to know traders thru other ways. A seller may be upgrading to a better armor suit. He’s bought a new helmet, selling the old one, and I wanna buy, but I also wanna pay top ped for his harness. He might not have been ready to sell, until he hears MY offer! At least give me the chance to make that offer!
Automatic bidding
e-Bay has it. I want to tell the auctioneer I’ll go as high as 110 ped, upping the price 1 ped at a time. That way I don’t need to run to the auction every time I get overbid (sp?). And this is not the same as offering my max all at once, since my max might not be as high as I need to go!
With automatic bidding, I don’t need to get up in the middle of the night (I admit, I did this once!) to see if that item was still going for a price I was willing to pay.
Scheduled offering
Sometimes I want to sell an item, but three similar ones are already on auction. This is not a good time to start competing. I would like to put mine on right after the earlier ones close, but that is in 3 days, or at 2 am, or BOTH. I want to put it on auction now, with a publish-date kind of thing. I would use that often.
Out-of-Game trading
I would be REALLY pleased it the Auction were available outside of the game. To monitor at the very least, but also to buy (which shouldn’t be too hard to make) and if possible, even to sell. Again, I am only in-game a few hours a day, and the rest of the time I am wondering if someone didn’t offer my favourite carbine at bargain-basement price! I WANNA BUY, MA! I’ll pay now and pick it up later!
I could buy those missing arm guards from work, imagine that…
Well, those are the issues I can think of off the top of my head. I love the auction, spend quite a bit of time there, both selling and buying. It is an important part of the game I think, and judging from the crowds I find at most auction, so do a lot of other players.
Let me know what you think of my suggestions, and please offer your own.
I guess silence is agreement, right?